Let the Rain Fall
by GirlInCafe
Summary: Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep. Michel de Montaigne


Prologue: Let the Rain Fall

There was a girl named Rose who loved the rain. She used to imagine what it would be like to snog someone passionately in it. The person in her thirteen year old imagination may have been a mixture of Johnny Depp, Hugh Grant, and possibly a little of the tall, dark, and dangerous high-school drop-out who played in the local pub. Wasn't his name Jimmy?

Three years later she fled her mother's flat, leaving her behind with a man with whose eyes had started to linger on her a little too long. She stopped to listen to Jimmy sing, and when his gaze lingered on her she found that she didn't mind one bit.

She had imagined kissing Jimmy in the rain for months before she left school and moved in with him, but after one week, all such fantasies had fled. But, she made her bed and she would sleep in it. She couldn't go back to her mother, or her mother's gross old boyfriend whose hands had started to wander.

Six months later, Jimmy was in prison for possession of something or another, and her mother had dumped her stupid boyfriend for cheating on her with a security guard.

_She was half his age! The dirty bastard._

Rose made the appropriate commiserative noises, and within minutes Jackie's heartbreak was forgotten in the excitement of getting her daughter back. After a couple months, Rose found a job as a janitor and began to pay back the debt that Jimmy saddled her with. They would get by, her mum and her. They always did.

Two years later, she had a job at a department store, and seven months after that, a stranger grabbed her hand and told her to run. Finally, her life began.

He showed her the universe, and in return, she taught him to love the rain.

They ran and hopped and fell in laughter. A friend joined them, whose wicked intentions gave way to ones more honorable. He became her older brother and she loved him for knowing that an older brother was what she needed.

He kissed her and the Doctor in the place of a goodbye and ran off to his death. The doctor didn't kiss her when he sent her away, but he kissed her when she came back, glowing golden and secure in the knowledge that she was Beloved by Time. She challenged death to a duel and won, bringing her friend back to life, and reduced the armies of Daleks to dust.

She didn't remember the Doctor's kiss, but she would never forget his death. He told her that she was fantastic and she knew he meant _I love you._

She saw it too, in the smile of the handsome stranger who was the Doctor now, and in the smug look he gave her every time he caught her looking at him. She was safe, she was secure, she was loved, and he hugged her every morning, evening, post near-death experience, and sometimes when she smiled at him.

Rose began to learn as well, she learned how many protons there were in a lithium atom, and that the Kristonians were a peaceful people during the winter but less friendly during summer. She read the _Complete Works of Charles Dickens_, _Pride and Prejudice _by Jane Austen, and snuck peeks at whatever formidable tome the Doctor was reading. It never occurred to her that just a few months ago, she would have had trouble understanding their contents.

Then she learned that she wasn't the doctor's first companion when they ran into one of his former ones. She was ashamed because she should have guessed that there had been others before her. He was 900 for god's sake! And yet… Rose brushed off Mickey's smugness with annoyance, and then with understanding as she realized that before he became her bitter ex-boyfriend, he had been her baby-sitter turned protector and best friend.

Her resolution to appreciate Mickey more was sorely tested by the Doctor's insistence that he come along when they left. She reacted with uncharacteristic ill-grace, because she knew that the Doctor was using him to put distance between them. That day, he had warned her that he would never age while she would wither and die. She knew that he would never be with her, really, as long he allowed that fact to haunt him. She didn't notice that she could multiply five digit numbers in her head, because she wished the doctor would say that she mattered to him.

A week later, the Doctor left her for another woman who was as mortal as she, only elegant, poised, and naturally blonde. He came back and in the joy and relief of the moment Rose forgot to be angry, but when they got back to the TARDIS Rose locked the door to her room and cried and cried. The TARDIS sang her to sleep, but she never wondered why it could.

The next morning she was done feeling sorry for herself, and tired of being angry with the Doctor. He formally apologized for leaving her behind, but made no mention of Reinette. Neither did she, until the Doctor dragged her away from the officer she had been flirting with at the inter-planetary gala a week later. He blustered at her, she called him out and they both did quite a bit of shouting while Mickey pretended that he didn't know them.

He apologized again, and she apologized too, they hugged and everything was alright between them. After that, she caught him looking at her once or twice and it was her turn to smile. One night, she dreamed that the two of them were kissing in the rain.

She was on top of the world, which was only slightly knocked out of orbit when Mickey left to live in a universe that would give him a new life and a second chance to take care of his gran. She and the Doctor ran, laughed, and faced down the hordes of hell. Every so often, the Doctor would look at her as if he wanted to kiss her, but he never did. That was fine with her. After all, they were supposed to be better than that, weren't they?

When an army of ghosts invaded her proper era, her mother took the chance to pull her a side and warn her that if she continued to travel with the doctor, she would lose her humanity. Too late, Rose began to wonder why she could suddenly do maths so well and asked herself when the TARDIS had begun to sing her to sleep.

Then Mickey and a parallel version of her father returned on the heels of the army of Daleks and ghosts-turned Cybermen. Her mother saw her father again, and she finally understood that all the other men that her mother had collected had simply been substitutes for him. She also knew that she was more like her mother than she would like to admit, in that she would never love anyone like she loved the Doctor.

He sent her away with her mother, her father, and her ex-boyfriend in order to keep her safe, but he should have known her better. She returned within the minute and helped him defeat their enemies, but when the monsters were sucked into the void, she found herself being pulled in with them. She knew without a doubt that she would die.

At the last possible second, her new father rescued her, but the walls between the universes had closed and she was on the wrong side. Clever as he was, the Doctor figured out a way to reach her on a beach in Norway, and she watched him fade into the wind.

In the short time they had to say goodbye, she hadn't told him that she no longer bruised and that she could still hear the TARDIS singing. She hadn't mentioned that she could solve complex equations in her head, and that she didn't sleep as much as she used to.

Only the TARDIS knew that though the world around her would wither and die, she never would. Rose had guessed enough to vow that she would do whatever it took to get back to the doctor, but she also promised herself that she wouldn't pine away in the meantime. After all, what was her life worth if she couldn't enjoy the rain?


End file.
